And for a sign between us that I
will perform my promise and for a token on thy part of obedience, I must
change thee, that thy person may not be known of men."
Then Ulysses bowed his head to receive the divine impression, and Minerva
by her great power changed his person so that it might not be known. She
changed him to appearance into a very old man, yet such a one as by his
limbs and gait seemed to have been some considerable person in his time,
and to retain yet some remains of his once prodigious strength. Also,
instead of those rich robes in which king Alcinous had clothed him, she
threw over his limbs such old and tattered rags as wandering beggars
usually wear. A staff supported his steps, and a scrip hung to his back,
such as travelling mendicants used to hold the scraps which are given to
them at rich men's doors. So from a king he became a beggar, as wise
Tiresias had predicted to him in the shades.
To complete his humiliation, and to prove his obedience by suffering, she
next directed him in his beggarly attire to go and present himself to his
old herdsman Eumaeus, who had the care of his swine and his cattle, and
had been a faithful steward to him all the time of his absence. Then
strictly charging Ulysses that he should reveal himself to no man, but to
his own son, whom she would send to him when she saw occasion, the goddess
went her way.
The transformed Ulysses bent his course to the cottage of the herdsman,
and, entering in at the front court, the dogs, of which Eumaeus kept many
fierce ones for the protection of the cattle, flew with open mouths upon
him, as those ignoble animals have oftentimes an antipathy to the sight of
anything like a beggar, and would have rent him in pieces with their
teeth, if Ulysses had not had the prudence to let fall his staff, which
had chiefly provoked their fury, and sat himself down in a careless
fashion upon the ground; but for all that some serious hurt had certainly
been done to him, so raging the dogs were, had not the herdsman, whom the
barking of the dogs had fetched out of the house, with shouting and with
throwing of stones repressed them.
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